The Misfortunes of Virtue
by Winter Ashby
Summary: Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to? [Draco & Hermione] DARK!FIC WARNING: Deaths, Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead, gore, & Deathly Hallows AU
1. Prologue: Ruler of Man

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note: **This is a really messed up fic. I'm not kidding, I don't think I've ever written anything this fucked up, ever. I don't know where it came from.

* * *

Prologue  
**Ruler of Man**

Its eyes were blank and hazy. Not brown or black, but a kind of snowy amber, veiled and unresponsive. It wasn't a _she_ anymore, he reminded himself. Not for the first time. Draco knew it was an 'it'. He understood, though somewhat fragmented, the strange abstractions that defined its existence. He was at least familiar with words like 'soul' and 'afterlife', although wizarding religion hadn't really taken off as it did for the muggles. He supposed it was because they had things like ghosts, and magic.

_Superstitious_, Draco sneered. That's all religion really was, superstition and tradition piled on fear and doubt.

He watched it fumble through the darkness. He noted, however, that it didn't stumble because it was dark; it stumbled because its limbs were jutted out at odd angels and jerked like a marionette being yanked around by an unskilled puppeteer.

That was closer to the truth than he cared to dwell on.

He thought again about a soul, and the absence of it, and tried to imagine what it would be like to be soulless, to be an 'it'. The batch of diluted Drought of Living Death he brewed each month made him feel hollow inside, like he was empty and barely ever there at all. But he still had a soul, whatever that was.

He didn't know how to define it, or if he believed, like the muggles did, in an omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient entity. Draco considered that if such a being did exist, then the last thing it would be concerned with would be the daily lives of humans. But whatever it was; this unnamed, intangible concept that made him different from _it_, no matter how much potion he drank or dead he felt. The fact remained that it was dead and he wasn't.

He sighed and closed the window on the small door, behind which he could still hear it fumbling and he shut his eyes.

It was clumsy. Maybe that was because _she_ was clumsy.

Her, she, it. The difference was a fine line, a thin distinction, largely based the pesky abstraction of a 'soul'. Maybe he could teach her to have a soul. She could learn to focus her static eyes and respond.

_She always did love to learn_.

A maniacal grin graced his face as he bolted the door with an _alohamora_ anti-charm. _Just in case_, he told himself, hopefully, foolishly.

Demented.

Even without understanding, he knew, admitted, that it wasn't _her_. It wasn't the filthy little mudblood who'd punched him so long ago. She wasn't a Gryffindor, a girl with seemingly no fear. She had been the one no one ever worried about, the one everyone thought would survive. But this thing, this 'it,' wasn't that girl anymore. It wasn't the headstrong, brilliant witch that even Voldemort wanted.

* * *

Sorry about all the creepiness, I like crazy!Draco. This will be split up into 10 relatively short chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. I will be posting them all in succession, so no need for reviews asking to update. I should probably wait a day between each chapter, but I'm too excited about this fic to wait. Again, just to reiterate, this fic is complete, I just need to load each chapter (tediously) and then I will be posting them. 


	2. Part One: Subjectivity of Vice

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** THIS IS THE SECOND CHAPTER OF THIS FIC. PLEASE START WITH THE PROLOGUE! FF(DOT)NET IS RETARDED, AND NO LONGER SENDS NOTIFICATIONS FOR CREATION OF A NEW STORY, ONLY FOR UPDATING THEM. (WTF IS UP WITH THAT?)

* * *

Part One  
**Subjectivity of Vice**

It was an Order.

A request.

A mission.

"Bring her to me." The Dark Lord commanded of his two most loyal Deatheaters. The only two so skilled in occlumency they tricked even him. It was an assignment he gave the moles.

Snape sneered, like the walking alliteration he was.

Draco hated the assignment. He hated being told to capture her, body and mind, and return her to the Dark Lord's clutches, "…or kill her," he had hissed.

It seemed, if the Dark Lord couldn't have, posses, inherit, corrupt her mind, no one would.

Draco felt a quiver of unabashed joy. The chance to see her writhe in pain at his hand was more than enough incentive to strike out on his own. So he stole away in the night, mark blazing, and a frantic kind of look in his eyes.

He found her easily. Muggle parents asleep in their muggle beds. Snoring and having muggle dreams. Like dogs, or monkeys are to them, so were muggles him. They were another species. Lowly, sometimes surprisingly clever or adept at certain things, but mostly beneath him.

She had protective charms on her house.

Draco smiled. She was an exceptional monkey, no doubt about that. Like one that learned to use its hands to speak. She rose above the rest of them. Her and her brilliant mind.

But that's what got her into trouble.

He couldn't discharm her room. So finally, as the sun dawned, he was exhausted and so angry that his pale cheeks were flushed. He resorted to throwing pebbles.

"Malfoy?" She hissed as she slid the window open. He shrugged, like it was a common thing, to prowl around muggle London in the middle of the night and toss rocks at her window.

Evil. Slytherin. _Dumbledore_.

His mind groaned. He was still the enemy, back then.

This was going to be harder than he expected.

"Granger." He drawled her name like it was a greeting and shoved his hands in his coat pockets.

"What're–?"

"Can I come in? It's fucking freezing." He cocked an eyebrow.

She was wearing pink pajamas.

He wanted to study her, like a potion, or an arithmancy problem. He liked arithmancy. He liked knowing there was always a correct answer, even if he didn't know what it was. He liked knowing right from wrong. It was all that gray area that confused him, twisted him up. At least if he knew what was wrong, he could say he choose it on purpose instead of accidentally falling into the murky realm of 'semi-evil' that Snape so often dwelled in.

Draco didn't ever want to be like Snape.

"No, you can't _come in_!" She looked livid, like she'd jinx him any second.

"I'm not here for _that_." He only considered much later that 'that' could have meant many, many things.

"Why _are_ you here, then?"

A muggle car rolled by and she looked at it, wearily.

"Let me in and I'll tell you."

She sighed, heaving her small breast above her crossed arms. He wondered if she'd taste like a pureblood. He wondered if there was a difference. Magic is still magic, after all.

He was becoming more and more like one of _them_. A good guy. So much so that he thought of the concept of blood-power felt nothing but the shell of useless lies. Looking at her, obliviously, there was no such thing as pureblood brains.

He snarled.

"You're mad! Get off my lawn or I'll apparate to…"

"To where?" he asked, curiously, "the Order?"

"How did you know –?"

"Let me in, and I'll tell you." He shuffled through her parent's flowers, towards her first-floor window.

"No."

_Stubborn as ever_.

"And if I tell you why I'm here?"

"Then I'll notify the Order." She was careful not to give anything away. No location, no 'how long' it would take. She didn't mention how she would communicate, or names.

_Clever_.

"And what if I told you _not_ to do that?"

"Then I'd say you really are a nutter, Malfoy. Now leave before…" she deliberated, "before I call the muggle police. You're lurking." With that, she slid the window shut.

He growled and balled his hands into fists. "Damn it, Granger, let me in!" he bellowed and she could see her face fall through the window.

She shook her head, 'no'.

Draco picked up a pebble and launched it at her parents' upstairs window.

"Don't." she mouthed.

He just smirked and tossed another. It hit and _tinked_ all the way down the roof. He could see her run her fingers through her wild hair. He picked up another pebble and arched his arm back.

She flung the window open. "Stop!" she whispered vehemently. She sounded pleading. Draco liked the way it sounded. He wished she'd say his name like that.

He was tired.

"No," he sounded like a petulant child, even to himself.

"Oh really, Malfoy, come off it." She didn't sound all that mad, though. Just exasperated.

"Let me in." he pulled back his arm and looked up to her parents window.

"What do you want?"

He sighed. It was a crossroad, a junction. It was an impasse, a compromise. He cracked. He knew he'd never get in now.

"I'm here to kidnap you." He told her, casually and shrugged his shoulders.

* * *

What will Hermione do? How will Malfoy be able to get inside now? And when Will we get to see some sexy time? Stay tuned to find out!  



	3. Part Two: Hierarchy of Inequality

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** I'm so sorry for flooding people's in boxes. This started out as a one-shot. But it ended up being 32 pages. So, I had to break it up a bit. And the natural cadence of the fic demanded short chapters. So, I'm posting it all at once, bit by bit. So, again, I'm sorry if you got 14 notifications. :(

* * *

Part Two  
**Hierarchy of Inequality**

"What?"

"That, or kill you." He shrugged again and she blanched. "So, can I come in now?"

"No!" her hands shook.

"Oh, don't flatter yourself. You're hardly worth the effort."

"Hardly." She croaked in agreement.

"Let me in." He trampled over the rest of the flowers and walked to her window. "I don't fancy sounding like a broken record." He put his hand on the sill, and pulled himself up.

She 'eeped' and backed away.

"I'm not going to hurt you. Actually, I'm one of the good guys now." He sounded just as surprised as she looked at that statement. It wasn't until right then that he admitted to himself that it was true.

Besides, it was a shame to lose such a unique monkey for no good reason.

She was fascinating, but only as a novelty. _No substance_, he reminded himself.

"But you said–"

"Oh, ignore that. It was purely for shock value. Come now, Granger, where are your manners. I'm fucking _cold_." The chill was bone deep.

He was teetering on the windowsill and without invitation he pulled himself through. He felt like an idiot, climbing through a window.

"No." she mumbled, but only halfheartedly and retreated farther back.

"Thanks." He said sarcastically as he straightened his robes. "Now look, I haven't much time. I spent hours trying to discharm your house," he shot her a muddled look, admiration and frustration, "so just listen."

"Malfoy–"

"Draco." He corrected her, pointing at himself. "Drraacooo." He elongated the syllables of his name.

"Her-mi-on-e." she shot back, indignantly, separating each syllable as if she were teaching him how to pronounce it.

He smiled.

She scowled.

"Now, listen here, Hermione," she shuddered, "I'm here on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap you and bring you to him, or to kill you."

She gave a strangled kind of gasp. "Harry–"

"–isn't here to save you this time, Granger." It sounded more menacing than he'd meant it to. But it was only then, after he'd said it, that he realized how true it was.

She was defenseless. He nearly shuddered with glee.

"Draco," she said his name with that same kind of pleading, half-terrified voice. It wasn't an angry hiss, but still – it roused something in him. Humming, demanding blood.

_Dirty, filthy mudblood_.

He wanted to hurt her.

"I wouldn't have told you, if I was gonna do it." He said, rather disappointed she didn't catch that herself. "If I was going to kill you, you'd be dead already. I could have blown up your whole house, parents and all." The thought had crossed his mind.

His hand closed over his wand in his pocket, and he wished he could take her. He wanted to lock her up, and study her mind. He wanted to take her apart, bit by bit, to see how she worked, what made her tick. What made her better than the others, what made her different that every other muggle? Why did she have magical powers? Why was she so smart?

"Then why did you come?"

"To warn you?" He shrugged, not sure if he really meant it, or if she bought it. He wasn't really sure why'd he'd come either. "To protect you?" It sounded like a question when he said it, like he was asking if she believed him.

She snorted.

He hated her.

"Protect me, from what? You're the scariest thing I've seen since…" she didn't finish. He imagined it was because of the look that crossed his face at the idea that he frightened her, and not because remembering the last scary thing hurt her too much. And it would lead to questions, questions he didn't want to answer.

"I'm working with Snape."

She said nothing.

"With the Order."

"Snape's not with the Order. Not anymore. Not since…" she looked tired, sad. He wanted to insult her so he could see her angry. She looked almost formidable when she was angry.

"Snape killed Dumbledore because Dumbledore _ordered_ him to. Ask your friend Potter about what Dumbledore makes his followers promise to do under his command. Downright loony, if you ask me." He thought about what Snape had told him. "Anything." he said it aloud and made a face at the thought. "It's all 'run away and leave me to die' and 'kill me when the time is right' with him." He imitated Dumbledore, without reverence and she flinched.

"But Harry was there, he saw you–"

"I wasn't working with Snape then." He'd learned later, when Snape was sure he could trust Draco, that it was already planned. It was a performance, for the Deatheaters, for Draco. It was all to save him from what the consequences would have been when he failed. Because, he knew, just as Dumbledore had back then, that he couldn't do it. But he didn't know Potter had been there to see his failure. It made it worse, made the stinging of never-being-good-enough seep into his bones and turned his blood stone cold.

"Harry said you couldn't do it. What happened to you? What made you change?" strange fascination, always getting her into trouble.

"Nothing." He hated the way she was looking at him, like she had a right to _understand_ him. "Snape made an unbreakable vow, to do it if I… failed." He looked back at the window. Confiding in her was worse than the look she gave him, because it made him feel weak.

"Dumbledore knew then? The whole time he knew what you were up to, didn't he?" She was easier to convince than the others would be, he knew this. She was smarter than they were.

"It was a show." He nodded.

"So Snape had to do it, because Dumbledore told him to!" she sounded innocent, still, like she was solving a problem in class.

He wanted to steal that innocence from her.

"Yes."

She nodded once. "Right then. We've got to tell Harry." She reached for a coat.

He snatched her hand and squeezed it until she whimpered.

"Wrong, Granger. Didn't you hear what I said about the Dark Lord? I've got to get you out of here. Snape will know–"

"I'm not going anywhere with you!"

He must have given her a frightening look because she backed away, farther into the shadows, her wrist still caught in his hand.

"It's your funeral." He let go of her. He kept his tone harsh, sharp at the edges. It was an open-ended threat. And he admitted then that he _could_ have killed her, if had wanted to. But as it was, he didn't. Her dirty blood on his hands, staining him… He already had enough stains.

"Malfoy–"

He growled.

"Draco! Draco," she sounded on the verge of her instincts. Fight or flight. She held her hands up in front of her. It was a placating gesture that Draco found exceedingly aggravating.

He watched her movements closely.

She glanced at the door, the window, and oddly enough, at the bed. This caught him off guard so that when she lunged for the window, he was momentarily stunned.

But only long enough for her to seize her wand from her desk.

"Not fast enough." He breathed on her cheek as he took hold of her arms and yanked her back against him. She whimpered and he felt powerful, truly powerful then.

He pulled his arms around her middle, pressing himself hard against her back. And just before the CRACK of the disapparation that sent the parchment on her desk fluttering to the floor, he laughed.

It was deep and not at all as he felt, dark and hovering just on the cusp of evil. No, the laugh was like a lover's caress after soft sex, something Draco knew nothing about.

CRACK!

* * *

Can Hermione really trust him? Where is he taking her? What will happen next time on Masterpiece theater?  



	4. Part Three: Notion of Reason

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** Snape makes a cameo! Clap for him, damn it! I think this fic may have driven me quite insane.

* * *

Part Three  
**Notion of Reason**

"Draco." Snape responded, without looking up.

"Professor!" Hermione cried, nearly sobbed. And Draco was overcome with the urge to not let her go. It was fleeting only, but for long enough that he held his vice-like-grip of the side-along apparation for a second longer than he should have.

"Miss Granger." Snape inclined his head.

"Be our bonder." Draco spoke before he thought better of it. Two sets of eyes pinned him. He merely looked bored, and haughty, a look he'd perfect over a lifetime.

"Bonder?" Hermione looked past him to Snape, "Bonder for what?"

Draco liked to think that she was scared. He relished it, savored it, like a finely aged enchanted wine. He liked the idea of being frightening, of making her shutter against him.

"For an unbreakable vow." He said, sounding bored, but his heart racing. It was a foolish idea, a foolish notion that would only end in ruin. Draco knew that, even then.

"Ah." Snape quirked an eyebrow and pushed his book aside.

"An unbreakable vow?" she cowered, and Draco nearly grinned with joy. "But that's forbidden."

"Ministry red-tape." Snape waved a hand dismissively. "It's just a simple binding contract."

"I know what it is." She didn't sound pompous, like she usually did when she knew something. Her voice wavered. Her hands shook, and Draco wanted her to cry.

"We'll make the vow, and then you can go home."

Snape didn't look pleased. Draco smirked, gleeful, nearly. He had control and power; he was drunk on it, high from defying the Dark Lord.

"What do I have to vow to do?"

Draco laughed. "Nothing."

She pursed her lips, and she came dangerously close to feeling the back of his hand across her face. But he stopped himself, with effort.

"Nothing Miss Granger." Snape's quiet, calm voice broke the silence.

Draco still _wanted_ to be a bad guy. He was raised on it, bottle-fed it, suckled it, lived it. He liked causing pain, seeing blood, killing. He was good at it.

He sneered and shuffled into the sitting room. He didn't wait to see when they would follow, or in what order.

"Nothing?" she asked, skeptical.

Draco turned. Snape's hand was pressed against her mid-back, leading her into the room. And Snape gave him a wicked smile that made his insides curdle with rage.

"You will be making the conditions." Draco said, spinning on his heel. He sat down in a low chair. "You know how this works, correct? You ask if I swear not to hurt you, or betray you, or hand you over to the Dark Lord. Blah, blah, blah." He tossed his hands through the air and tried to keep his expression markedly blank.

"Why?"

"Because, we need to come back to the Order, now that we are risking our lives for you, and the vow will prove our allegiance," Snape informed her coolly. He stood by the fire, his wand at the ready.

She was thinking. Mulling it over, passing it back and forth through her mind. Draco licked his lips and imagined it was her he tasted. She wasn't at all ordinary, as she should have been.

_Always the exception_.

"Do I have a choice?" she asked with her hand on her waist.

"No." he answered plainly and watched her.

She nodded. "Alright."

"Let's begin." Snape made a grand, sweeping gesture at the carpet of the room. And with a muffled kind of grace, Draco slid to the floor, kneeling.

Hermione followed, though not as fluid as he. She teetered, indecisive, and landed with a thud. She winced.

Draco held up a hand and waited for her to reciprocate. She hesitated, and he couldn't stop the hiss of warning he gave her. Snape cleared his throat.

"I haven't got all day, Granger. Places to go, people to kill and all that."

"Hush." He could have sworn that there was a smile playing across her tight lips. She wiped her palms against her pajamas and gave him an apologetic look. Her hands were hot and clammy. Sweaty.

_Disgusting_.

"Miss Granger, when you are ready." Snape positioned his wand over their hands.

"Just a contract." Draco heard her whisper to herself, eyes closed, screwing up the confidence. Draco gripped her hand a little harder and watched her brown eyes focus on him. He could see a flare of anger there.

_Good,_ he thought, _anger makes her more determined_.

"Draco Malfoy," he liked hearing his name from her, "do you swear to behave?"

"What?" Draco tried to tug his hand away, but she dug her nails into his skin and smiled, sweetly. He wanted to lunge at her.

"Draco," Snape interrupted, red snake poised at the tip of his wand, ready to coil.

"Yes. I swear to fucking behave!" he ground his teeth together.

The flaming snake burnt all the way up his arm. He could feel a string, a tie, a rope wrapping around his mind. The snake coiled through his veins and around his heart. His mind burned from the heat of it. It felt like legimency, except this was a searing hot flame, not a cold trickle. He felt like he was being bound.

And a panic set in when he realized that was exactly what was happening. It was only sometime much later that he realized just how exposed he'd made himself to her that night.

"Do you swear your allegiance to The Order of The Phoenix, and Dumbledore?"

That one, at least, he'd expected. "Yes." He tried his best to sound bored as another snake wound its way up through his bones.

He bucked and groaned. It seemed like the harder the promise was, the more it hurt.

She smiled.

"And, Draco," she called to him through the swirling magic, her own brow lined with a thin sheen of sweat. He wondered if it hurt her to ask. That made him happier.

"Do you swear not to let me die?"

"No!" Snape bellowed.

But it was too late. She smirked and cringed at the same time.

_Too clever for her own good. _

It was too late to stop, and she'd already cast her end of the enchantment. She'd sealed his fate the moment she said it. He almost smiled. It was a very Slytherin thing to do. Sneaky, selfish and manipulative, so unlike her.

He had to agree. He had no choice now.

"Not unless I kill you myself." Draco answered back. It was a mean answer, one he didn't give much thought to at the time. But haunts him still.

And this time, the snake that coiled was soft and gentle, just nudging the connection that was already formed. Maybe it was because the connection was already there, or maybe it was because promising it wasn't difficult at all. He wasn't sure.

But as the magic faded, she looked horrified. And Snape looked absolutely incensed.

"This isn't a game!" he snapped, putting his wand away, tucking it into the folds of his robes. "Do you have any idea what you've just done?"

"I made an unbreakable vow to save a mudblood's life." Draco stood up and turned his back to her. Hermione gasped and he smiled over his shoulder at her. "Oh, don't get your knickers in a bunch."

"I thought you had to behave!"

He smiled and chuckled. "Yeah, behave like _what_?" he raised an eyebrow and she chewed on her lip.

There was a surge of pain before his thought even registered.

_I'd like to bite clean through that lip._

Maybe her vow really did have an effect.

"No, you fools! You've condemned each other to death." Snape crossed between them, and Draco was struck with a momentary annoyance of not being able to see her anymore. He moved to the side just in time to see her look utterly unaffected by what Snape had to say.

She stood up, her hands on her waist and nodded. "Good."

"Here, here!" Draco chimed in and gave her a little nod.

Snape leaned over, close to her ear and spoke softly. "That was a very stupid thing to do, for such a smart girl." And then, he was gone, leaving the room in a flurry of flapping fabric as the door shut behind him.

Draco turned to look at her in the firelight. Her hair was a mess, falling around her face. Her pink pajamas were wrinkled and made her cheeks look rosy. Her eyes met his.

"Take me back."

* * *

Now that Draco's made the unbreakable vow, will he be accepted? What will be the consequences of making this pact? And did I smell some sweet Snape/Hermione undertones in this chapter? (Why, yes you did. Thank you very much, overactive imagination)  



	5. Part Four: Pursuit of Evil

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** Welcome to the Order, bitch! No, there is no school in this fic? I mean, honestly who goes to school while there's a war going on. And, for that matter, who camps out in the middle of the woods for MONTHS while there's a war going on? You know this is more like what you all were expecting from DH. (Except, not the D/Hr bit, or... maybe you were!)

* * *

Part Four  
**Pursuit of Evil**

No sooner had the spinning, stretched sensation of the side-along apparation faded than Draco was whisked away from her. As his hand was pulled from her arm, there was a disarming spell fired in his direction. He recognized the signature _expelliamus_ immediately. His wand shot from his hand but he didn't see it. He couldn't take his eyes off her. She smiled something wicked and turned into the shadows.

He might have loved her then, for being so cunning. She took him directly into the heart of the Order, and there was nothing he could do but allow himself to be separated, unarmed, and locked in a dark room.

Outside, he could hear voice, yelling. It was the ghost of an argument between the Great Chosen One, himself and Hermione. He could hear the crisp anger reverberate, even in the disorientating dark.

They were fighting about him.

"What were you thinking?" the man-child asked her, unrightfully so.

"That it's time we ended this war, and they could help us do it." Draco imagined her pale face flushed with anger.

"He killed Dumbledore!"

"No, _he_ didn't. And I think there's more to that story than we know." There was a brief pause and Draco's chest flared at the image in his head of her giving Potter those pleading eyes. "We need them, and with Draco under the unbreakable vow, you won't have to worry about him."

"You made an unbreakable vow with Malfoy?" the indignation in his voice was clear.

"You what?" they were joined by another voice, even louder than the first.

"I had to. It was the only way to be sure we could trust them."

"Hermione, do you realize what that means? You could've died." At this Draco stretched the muscles in his neck and balled his hands into fists. It was the Weasley who'd said it. And Draco was set on making him pay.

"It's fine. He swore his allegiance, and I made him swear to behave, so there's nothing to worry about Harry. What we really need to do, right now, is find out everything we can from him. He said Voldemort wanted me. That must mean that he's desperate. Don't you see what this means?" she implored them, and Draco was glad to see they were too dull to catch on to what she was saying. "He's losing, and he knows it. He's getting desperate, which means he'll make mistakes. And with Snape and Malfoy on our side, now, it's just a matter of time before we get the last 2 horcruxes." The last word was uttered so quietly, Draco had barely heard it.

"Fine, but I want you to stay away from him. He's… unstable." Potter gave the order and Draco could practically _hear_ his ugly face frowning.

After the argument was over, Draco stood in the center of the dark room and considered the hollow feeling in his gut. He had wanted her to fight back, to scream, to yell. Maybe part of him wanted her to defend him, defend her decision to support him. But in the end, all she had done was appeal to 'the greater cause' of fighting Voldemort. And for whatever reason, he was left feeling disappointed.

He sat in the room for a long time, wishing he had his wand back, wishing he'd never come, wishing she'd come for him. The dark was strange, magical, he was sure. He could feel the pulsing in the air, the electric charge of the spells and enchantments around him.

When the door was finally pushed aside, and The Chosen One, The Boy Who Lived (again and again and again), The Great Harry Potter himself strode in, he left little to the question of who was in charge. Everything about him screamed power, he looked much older than Draco remembered him being just a few months ago. Even the way he held his wand made Draco think that the 'unforgivables' had taken a new place in his repertoire of defensive spells.

Draco sneered.

"Why come back?" Potter crossed his arms.

"I missed the company." There was a trickle of pain in his chest and he reminded himself to _behave_.

"What information do you have?"

"That's all, no small-talk, not 'Hey, Malfoy, how's life as a Deatheater?' or 'It's been a while, you look like hell?'" Draco smiled; sickly so, with malice and resentment.

"Where is Voldemort?" He wasn't taking the bait. He wasn't getting angry. Draco considered that after so long of thinking he was in charge of everyone, maybe it made him into a leader, and not just a cheap imitation of one.

"I can't tell you. I'm not the secret keeper." Draco added quickly, seeing the look that passed over Potter's face. "Where are we?"

"A secret location."

Draco scowled. "Where, Potter?"

"I can't tell you. I'm not the secret keeper." Potter shot back at him, and Draco felt the tiny drop of respect he might have considered having dry up immediately.

"Then who is?"

"Dunno." Potter confessed and shrugged his shoulders. "We have secret keepers for the secret keepers. We learned our lesson before," here Draco interjected a snide remark about Potter's parents, but only in his head, "after Dumbledore died," Potter didn't flinch at all, and Draco could feel the vestige of the fleeting respect return, "we had to abandon the old headquarters. I run things now," as if Draco needed to be told that, "and I do things a little differently."

Potter pulled out his wand and swirled it between his fingers. "Oh?" Draco asked, nonplussed. He watched Potter's wand.

"You will not be given the use of a wand, until I'm satisfied that you can be trusted." Then he added, "Not that it's very likely that will _ever_ happen" just to twist the jagged edge of uselessness in a little further. "If you ever want your wand back, you _will_ help us. When I ask you something, I want the answer. Not a joke, not a lie, not another word besides the answer to my question." Potter turned his back to him and paced from side to side. "You will _not_ harass the other members of the Order, most of them are people you know and probably dislike. You will not step foot outside this compound without myself, Ron or Hermione with you." He stopped walking. "No, wait. You will not step foot outside without either myself or Ron with you. You are _never_ to be alone with Hermione, Ginny, Luna or Neville. Is that all clear?"

Draco was clenching his fists so hard, his knuckles turned ghost white in the light that filtered in through the cracked door.

Potter didn't wait for him to answer. "You will behave _exactly_ like this, or I will keep you locked in this room. Hermione put a spell of Perpetual Darkness on it." And as if by summoning, her slender figure appeared in the doorway, framed in the light cast around her, leaving her face in shadows.

"Promise, Draco." She said from the door, quiet and sullen. "Promise you will behave."

"I've already promised!" he shouted, and he could feel his chest burning. He winced and clutched the front of his robes without even thinking about it.

"The compulsion is set." She told Potter, and turned from him.

Draco wanted to see her face as she said it. He wanted to see the defeated look in her eyes at bending to the will of her leader. He wanted to see her humbled and broken. But all he could make out was a glint of brown in the light as she turned.

"Welcome to the Order." Potter said before closing the door yet again, and leaving Draco with nothing but the memory of the brown spark in the unyielding darkness.

He wasn't sure how much time had passed in that room. He could hear people moving, footsteps, muffled voices. Not like the first time he'd been locked up. Someone must have put a spell over the door, because he could no longer make out what the voices were saying, unless they were shouting.

In the room, the dark mark that branded his arm burned so badly, he would have rather ripped it out than feel the snake and skull crawling under his skin, calling to him, demanding he come back. But strangely enough, it was in that dark time that he learned to shut out the pain. And after a while, he didn't feel it so much. When it moved, and burned, it was just a soft murmur in the dark, something to keep him company. He always wondered if Potter knew what he was doing when he locked him in there. He never asked him. And eventually, they let him out. But that wasn't much better. Potter had his ghoul-of-a-house-elf, Krechure, following him around.

Draco soon learned that when a secret keeper dies, everyone who knew the secret, in turn becomes secret keepers, which meant that the Order's old headquarters, wherever it was, wasn't safe anymore. So Potter created a network of underground cells. They all operated independently, and no one knew where all the cells were, except the liaison.

Hermione was gone a lot, off on official Order business. After she'd convinced her parents that they didn't have a daughter, and sent them to Australia, she became something of a ghost, floating through the empty halls at odd hours, her eyes sunken and looking more exhausted each time he saw her. She infiltrated the Ministry, using the cover of interning at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as her cover. Draco sneered and pretended he wasn't impressed, but the truth was, the Order of the Phoenix, under Potter's control, was running far better than the Deatheaters, who were camped out in his parents' dining room most nights.

He became a good, little Potterette, dancing on the strings The Chosen One pulled. Draco was bled dry of every ounce of information he could give. But no matter how many times he insisted that the Dark Lord was searching for a weapon, the only thing Potter was concerned about was some kind of treasure the Dark Lord hid.

He asked over and over again if he'd ever mentioned hiding something or giving a possession to another Deatheater. That or, everything Draco knew about Nagini. He asked about how it obeyed, how it communicated, how it killed. He seemed obsessed with it. And when Draco suggested that it might be better off to try and stop the Dark Lord before he got whatever weapon he wanted, all Potter seemed to care about were these things called horcruxes.

He'd only heard the word used once, the night he came to the Order. Hermione had whispered it outside the room of Perpetual Darkness and Draco had come to understand that these horcruxes, whatever they were, were what Potter and his army was after.

Draco couldn't make sense of it. Any way he looked at it, relics and treasures didn't seem to be important. But Potter wouldn't listen.

So, he kept a low profile, mostly. He avoided anyone with red hair and freckles, seeing as how they all blamed him for getting one of their siblings mauled. He also tried to stay as far away from Longbottom and Loony Lovegood as much as possible. After all, those were _orders_.

He didn't normally take to sulking so well. But in the overcast shadows back then, it was easy to drift off into perpetual self-pity with little effort. And that stupid binding that made him _behave_ was always just a foot above his head, circling.

Eventually, Potter called Krechure off and ordered the sniveling back-stabber on some other secret mission. And a few days later Hermione showed up at his room (which was enchanted to fit on the side of the building they were in) alone. Immediately, as shooting pain gnawed at his chest.

"Get out." He hissed and backed away.

"It's okay." She said as she rounded the door, meanwhile his chest ached and burned. "I release you from that behavior." And immediately, the pain was gone. Draco took deep breaths and held his chest where the flame had been.

"What do you want?"

She smiled, unconvincingly, and pulled a slender wand from her cloak. "I'm leaving in the morning. I'm not sure when I'll be back, so I wanted to make sure you had this."

She handed him the wand. It was thinner than his had been, more supple. It felt strange in his hands, too feminine. "This isn't my wand."

"I know. Harry still won't give it to you. But this one will work, for now. It's not as good as your own, but it'll still do magic. It's quite new. The wood is elm and its core is thestral hair, so it won't be anywhere near as strong as your wand was." She looked apologetic, "but just in case I don't come back, I thought you ought to have _something_."

By the way she said it, she made it sound as if Potter didn't know she was giving it to him, and it rather sounded as if she made the wand herself. It also didn't escape his attention that she just alluded to her own death. "Why wouldn't you come back?" he asked, not taking the wand from her hand. He let it sit there, in her outstretched palm and looked at noting but her face.

She betrayed nothing.

"Has it got anything to do with the horcruxes?" at this, she gasped a little and drew back.

"How do you know…?"

"I heard you say it the first night I got here. I just figured the snake and the treasure has something to do with it, since that's all you three seemed to be concerned with." She looked relieved.

"So, you don't know what the last horcrux is, you've never heard Voldemort talk about them?"

Draco inched closer, itching to get a hold of a wand, at last, even if it was weak and not his. It was better than nothing.

"No." and he took the stick from her hand, careful not to touch her skin. "Wound it help?" he asked as he turned, not really caring about the answer.

"Yes." He heard before she slipped out the door.

And on instinct alone, Draco swished the wand through the air and whispered "_Impervious_" where she had just been standing. He knew it wouldn't do any good anyway, but a small part of him imagined that when she did come back, because he was sure she would, he could feel like at least he'd done something useful, even if it was only in his imagination.

He justified it by rationalizing that if she died, then he would die as well. And it was a matter of self preservation alone that made him want to protect her.

While she was away, he hid the wand and practiced with it at night when everyone else slept. He wanted to use it to get his wand back. But even the thought of it made his chest burn. So he silently obeyed the compulsion to behave that she set on him, even in her absence. And when he did slip up, when he did draw the wand because Potter had some hair-brained idea – the shooting, searing, burning pain ate away at him. After the initial shock of finding Draco writhing on the floor, Potter allowed him to keep the inferior wand. And after a few months of the pain, it became a pavlovian response to hold his tongue, not reach for the wand, follow orders.

"What did she make you vow?" Harry asked one morning before Draco was to leave the protective wards of the main cell for the first time. Draco could tell Potter was nervous about taking him, without Hermione around to articulate the terms of his behavior. But when Draco told Potter that the Dark Lord had once visited his family's vault at Gringotts, there was no turning back.

"Like I'd tell you, Potter." Draco was glad to finally be leaving, but he knew he would be in much more danger than any of the other members of the Order if they ran into Deatheaters.

"Hermione told me what the first two vows were." Here, he sneered. Draco clenched his fists as the pain in his chest curled around his heart. He wanted to destroy that look on Potter's face. "She's brilliant, you know." He was baiting Draco, trying to get him to deny it. Draco had no intention of lying.

"That's why the Dark Lord wanted her." Draco shrugged and Potter's face dropped. "She must have told you, how I risked my life to save her." He played the hero, reluctantly so, and savored the anger that washed over The Chosen One's face. For once, he wasn't the one who saved everyone. This time, it had been Draco. He liked the idea of stealing Potter's thunder. "Why don't you just ask her what the last condition was?" Potter frowned, even more.

"She won't tell me."

"Oh, it's like that, is it?" Draco felt rather smug as he leaned back in his chair. He had always liked that she'd kept her mouth shut about it. It was just further proof that she was remarkable in a sea of idiots. The king, of which, was now fuming.

"Tell me, Malfoy."

"No."

"Tell me, or I swear I'll… I'll…" Potter took a step forward in the tiny room, his green eyes blazing behind his glasses and his hands tight at his sides.

"You'll what, Potter, have me thrown in Azkaban? I'm your best chance at getting to the Dark Lord. You wouldn't dare risk throwing that away, now would you?" Draco's hands itched for his own wand.

"When this is over, Malfoy, you're going to pay for every rotten thing you've ever done."

"Why wait?" Draco didn't bother telling him he'd already started making up for them, one by one, the toll was beginning to ebb away at the edges of Draco's once stone exterior. He was beginning to crumble from the weight of his own mistakes.

* * *

What is this nonsense about 'behaving'? Draco is NOT amused. Poor, poor Draco. I fear he's beginning to fray at the edges from the stresses of war. Next time: How will Draco adapt to living with the very people whose lives he made a living hell when they were at school?  



	6. Part Five: Advent of Loss

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** Warning: Character death.

* * *

Part Five   
**Advent of Loss **

By the time she did return, skinny, scarred and bruised, tortured, and frail, Draco was nearly convinced he was a different person altogether. He had been given back his own wand and allowed out of the building a few more times. Potter needed him which gave Draco a certain amount of power. It wasn't the kind of power he used to have, but he took what he could.

He didn't see her much at first. The Weasley had taken to her bedside like a leech, and couldn't be pried away. But when he was forced to go on some assignment to look for a horcrux, no doubt, Draco stole a few moments watching her sleep as a reward for placing her under his protection before she left.

She didn't talk about what happened. The only thing he ever heard her say on the matter was at dinner once, near the end of the war, when she commented that his family had a nice house. That, and the way she visibly shrunk at the name 'Bellatrix' was all the information he needed.

He wondered if his aunt asked about him while she tortured Hermione. He liked to think that she would have lied for him, to protect him, and been tortured all the more for it.

Everything else seemed to be going according to Potter's plan. He bossed people around and went to funerals with the air of a seasoned war veteran. And after nearly a year living in their midst, seeing the way they lived and died, Draco was forced to admit that they were an army. First they were The Order of the Phoenix, then Dumbledore's Army, and now Potter's Army.

And he was one of them.

Of course that didn't mean they had to like him. The Weasley was particularly prickled by his continued presence. The more responsibility and freedom he got, the worse the other boy's scowl became. And he frequently took it out on the only person who put up with him, Hermione.

"Why won't you tell us what the last condition was?"

Draco was passing through the mostly-empty halls of one of the dank 'staging facilities' the Order used. There was going to be a mission soon. Everyone was on edge. He could hear one of the Weasleys; the one Hermione was fucking, yelling from down the hall. Draco paused, he didn't have much entertainment these days and a lover's quarrel (over him, no less) was just what he was in the mood for.

"That's between me and Draco." She sounded tired, she usually did these days. Potter was using her like a carrier pidgin to relay messages between all the dormant cells of the Order.

"Oh, so it's _Draco_ now?" The Weasley erupted, a crisp anger to his voice that Draco only wished he still had the power to use. But he had nothing and no one to yell at anymore. Everyone treated him like a leaper these days. "What happened to Malfoy?" It hadn't escaped Draco's notice either that over the past year she'd started to use his name more. He wondered if that was because he started using hers or if it was mutual. It didn't really matter, anyway. It didn't mean anything, he told himself.

"It's just a name, Ron."

"No, it's not! It's what he is, Hermione. He's a _Malfoy_, and you just want to pretend that he's not. I don't know what happened between the two of you before you brought him here, but I don't like the way he looks at you." Draco smiled at this. He knew exactly what the Weasley was talking about. Draco liked to watch Hermione and pretend that she was his, to do with what he pleased.

"I don't know what you're talking about. Honestly, Ron, just grow up."

Draco slipped into an empty room when he heard the door open and footsteps headed in his direction.

"This isn't over. I want to know what you made him promise."

"I'm warning you, Ron, stay out of it. He's here now, and he's loyal to the Order. Harry trusts him, he give him tasks and gave him his wand back. Whether you like it or not, Draco is one of us now and you're just going to have to get used to it. He's trying to help. That's all you need to know. Anything else is none of your business."

Draco stayed hidden behind the door for a long time, imaging what she looked like as she told him off. He hoped she'd blushed, that would have made him furious.

He wondered too, why she never told them. If he knew her at all, which he berated himself for admitting he did, then she was probably just holding out now because she was stubborn. But what had made her do it in the first place? He didn't know. Maybe it was because she knew they would be infuriated. Maybe she didn't want to start a fight, which if they knew his end of the vow, was very likely to happen.

But for whatever the reason, Draco was hard pressed to find one thing in his miserable life he enjoyed more than the idea that he and her had a secret, together. Even if it was only because it drove Potter and the Weasley mad.

After a few more months it slowly trickled down through the ranks that Draco's Father had been killed. A dementor sucked out his soul, if his father ever had one. It didn't surprise Draco. He knew, when he hadn't come back after the Dark Lord summoned him, his father paid the price. It wasn't the first time a member of his family died at the hands of their master. Dear Aunt Bellatrix was all too pleased to tell the Dark Lord all about his mother's betrayal when she made the unbreakable vow with Snape after her own abysmal failure at the school.

He still couldn't get the bits of flesh and bone out from under his skin. He'd never admit it. Never tell anyone living what seeing that kind of torture had done to him. He was broken, inside. Torn apart, into tiny splinters of what he once was. His mother's screams of agony and begging for mercy, for help, calling out for him and his father – he died because of it. Inside, he was as empty as Hogwarts was. Not a teacher or student had greeted the start of term. Many were dead by then anyway.

He remembered the day the Weasley his age was killed. It was sunny, strangely enough. And he could taste the blood from the other man on his lips. It was a simple mission. Gather information on the last, unknown horcrux. But something went wrong, and he was killed, caught in a dark curse that tore him to pieces on the inside.

Draco felt a wild sense of satisfaction, joy almost at seeing the other boy lying helpless, lifeless in the bloodstained grass. It was an escape, an insane kind of freedom that Draco longed for. He was the one that should have died, but when it wasn't him, it was satisfying, relieving. He was glad it was the other boy who died and not himself. So, it was a shock for him to find tears streaming down his face as he kneeled next to the body.

That's the way Hermione found him, hunched over the body, crying, his head in his hands, streaking blood through his hair.

He woke up some time later in her bed, cleaned and dressed in fresh clothes. He never knew where she stayed before then. She was a liaison between all the sleeper cells, so her location was kept a secret. Before then he would have just assumed that Ron was her secret keeper. Apparently, he was wrong. Later, she would confess that she was her own secret keeper. And he hated that he was _proud_ of her for being so devious.

He found her in a corner of the dank castle, weeping and rocking against a wall.

"Why did you bring me here?" he asked, his hands still shaking, trembling just slightly.

"I didn't know what else to do." She didn't look at him when she spoke.

"What'd you do with…" even Draco's quick wit and sharp tongue failed him. "…with him?"

"I just left him there." She cried some more and there was a foreign itch in his hands and arms.

"Where are we?" it was cold inside the drafty castle.

"Scotland." he almost laughed. It was wretched and painful. In a country full of red hair and freckles, and the only one she wanted wasn't here. He would never come for her again.

_Water, water everywhere_. Draco thought, and nearly laughed at his own humorlessness. There were tears on his cheeks and he touched them, wordlessly.

Hermione looked up at him, just as surprised to find him crying.

"I don't know why I keep doing that." He said and rubbed the wet tears between his thumb and forefinger. It was a strange reaction, one he didn't quite understand. He'd cried before, before he was broken and hollow. He'd cried last year when he thought of the task he had to complete, alone. But he hadn't cried since the Dark Lord broke him.

"Because, you're not as evil as you think."

"I never thought I was evil." He liked to pretend it was true. It wasn't, he knew better.

She turned her head to the side a little, and her hair fell across her blotchy, tear-streaked face.

A silence crept up around them, so slowly that he hardly noticed as the _nothing_ became comforting in her presence. Eventually, he slid his back down the opposite wall, and watched her in the cresting sunrise. She looked tired, worn, her skin was pale and gaunt. She looked dead, like she could have been an inferi, if it weren't for her eyes. The eyes, he knew were different from the rest of the body, for some reason. And when you really died, it was the eyes that gave it away. He'd seen it before.

"What happened?" She asked a long, long time later. He'd fallen asleep with his eyes open, watching her.

"We were looking for the last horcrux."

She nodded, "That much, I knew."

"Deatheaters ambushed us at the cemetery, the one where Godric Gryffindor is supposed to be buried." He moved his hand into his robe, the one she'd obviously cleaned, and felt his wand, reassuringly.

"Ah." She leaned her head back against the stone wall and closed her eyes.

"It was a trap."

She grunted, a sign that she was still listening. "Ron thought he'd be a hero, I suppose." She said after a minute of Draco trying to decide exactly how to say that without coming off as an insensitive prick.

"Something like that." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes as well. They were beginning to sting again.

"Who was it?"

"Travers and Yaxley. But that was Dolohov's curse, I'm sure of it." Draco recalled the familiarity of the faces accompanying the names.

"Did you kill them?" He'd never heard her sound the way she did before. He opened his eyes to look at her, to make sure it really was her who spoke. She sounded a bit evil just then.

"Yeah." He knew all the unforgivables, relished in them, mastered them they way he seemed to be able to do with all dark magic.

"Good." She opened her eyes and nodded. And the silence was gone, replaced by a conversation Draco didn't really want to have. But he'd already gotten started; it seemed almost rude _not_ to ask.

"What're you going do now?" his wand was a reassurance against his fingertips.

She looked over at him crookedly, like she couldn't understand what he meant. "What I have to." She pushed back against the wall and stood, stretching and still crying but with little recognition of it. She didn't wipe her years away and the string that bound them tugged a little at that. "What about you?"

Draco scoffed. "Kill them all."

"Good." She nodded again, even though Draco had meant it as a sick joke and expected to be reprimanded for it. "You can leave when you want." She waved a hand at him over her shoulder as she walked down the empty halls.

* * *

Sorry, you all. It had to be done. Let's all spare a moment of silence for poor Ron. ... Okay, now that's over with - what will Draco do now that he's at Hermione's castle? (Just a little aside, I totally wrote Travers and Yaxley before I read DH, so I had no idea he was gonna become more important. Oh well, I'm glad Draco killed him. The twat.) On a canonical note, yes - Dolohov's curse is canon. It's said to 'leave no external marks' but is 'very damaging'.  



	7. Part Six: Necessity of Reliance

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** A little peak into Hermione's mind. A short chapter this time.

* * *

Part Six  
**Necessity of Reliance**

Draco stayed at the castle a long time.

It was completely empty, except for one room on the third floor that Hermione never slept in. She had her trunks and books and every worldly possession she still had, he suspected, but she wouldn't sleep there. Instead, he'd find her on in the morning, asleep on a tapestry she tore from the wall. Or in front of the fireplace in the den on the ground floor. Once he found her in the kitchen, slumped over the counter, her cheek pressed against the cold granite.

She didn't seem to mind that he stayed. In fact, he hardly thought she noticed. She was always on her way out, to some secret meeting. And Draco would sit in her room, read her books, and wait for her to come back so the unease in his chest could finally dissipate.

Even though, most of the time he pretended he didn't feel a thing.

He blamed the vow, mostly.

He had long since outworn his welcome at the Order, having failed to save The Chosen One's best friend, he thought it more prudent to stay in the relative safety of the secluded castle. It wasn't much different than those first few months had been, when he living in Perpetual Darkness and curled up on himself for warmth. Except now, he watched as she turned in, folded herself up over her broken heart and watched, helplessly, as she turned colder with each passing day.

She was hollow and shattered, just the way Draco felt. But instead of draw her closer as perhaps he should have done, it disgusted him to see his own weaknesses reflected in her. He hated when she was away, because then he couldn't watch her sleep, as he had become accustom to doing. But when she was back, he felt even more useless than before.

Unable to help her, unable to stop her from crying in her sleep; He held his tongue and dreamt of killing Travers and Yaxley more slowly than he had.

And when she did come back, they didn't really talk. They just let the silence grow between them, full of unspoken words. Until one morning, he woke up on a couch he'd claimed as his, and she was on the floor next to him.

"What're you doing?"

She yawned and stretched, but she still looked just as tired as she always did. "I _was_ sleeping."

"Why don't you sleep in your own room and leave me the hell alone?" he didn't mean it, not really. He didn't really mean much of anything he said now-a-days.

"I can't sleep there." She rubbed her eyes and sat up, a black cloak draped over her knees. She'd been using it as a blanket. It wasn't hers; hers had a ridiculous SPEW button. The one she was using as a blanket was his. He recognized it because it had a Slytherin patch and a prefect badge that just never seemed right to take off.

"Why not? It's _your_ room?" he didn't really want to be that angry. It was just easier than feeling sorry for her, and that pitiful face she was making. He didn't take his cloak back, even though he wanted to. He didn't want to touch her grief, he was afraid he might start crying again.

"You know why." She brushed her hair out of her face.

"No, I don't."

"Because, that's where Ron and I used to sleep." He knew it was coming, he knew that was the reason she was gone so often and still, he couldn't stop himself from reacting. He should have been like stone, immovable by something so devastatingly insignificant. But he wasn't. He was soft, and malleable, and bent at the edges when she spoke about the man he saw die with that soft, wistful tone.

"He's dead."

"I know that! But it doesn't mean I have to sleep there. This is my house and I can sleep wherever the bloody hell I want!" She didn't look nearly as sad as she had before. He always did like her better when she was angry.

"Suit yourself." And he stood, to leave her alone with her misery.

"Draco," the way she said his name… it was like she was dead inside, nothing but old memories that haunted her in her sleep. It was just the way he felt. "Did he… did Ron say anything, before…"

"No. He didn't have time." Draco stood, stretching out his back and looked down at her. She seemed smaller than usual this morning. "I should leave."

"You don't have to." She sounded smaller each time she spoke and it was getting harder and harder to pretend that he didn't want to touch her, slap her, tear her apart from the inside to make all those pathetic emotions disappear.

After a moment, she held up her hand, palm-side up. He looked at it strangely, unsure of what it meant, or what she wanted him to do with the appendage.

"You could stay. Harry likes knowing where you are without having to see you. And at least, the castle doesn't seem so alone." He watched her rationalize, out loud, the reasons she'd fooled herself into thinking was the purpose behind her gesture.

"I can't stay forever." He touched her hand, wrapped his own around hers, his fingers sliding over her skin. She was cold. He wanted her to be warm. Whenever he'd imagined touching her, she was always warm. The cold only made him feel more like a mockery of what she should have been.

But she smiled. It was small, and he could tell she didn't really mean it. It didn't reach her eyes and she looked away before the ghost of it was even gone from her face.

"What else does Potter say about me, these days?" He chided and made sure to sound arrogant.

"That you're a hero." She stood, still holding his cloak and turned her back to him. She moved her wand and there was a fire roaring in the hearth. The oranges and yellows of it made her brown hair glow.

He preferred to look at her by firelight. He forgot he hated her then, because she looked so ethereal no one would ever assume she wasn't a pureblood.

* * *

How will Draco react to the tentative cohabitation that begun to take root? Will this truce last long enough to get them through the war? Tune in next time for Part Seven: Collapse of Decadence.  



	8. Part Seven: Collapse of Decadence

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** I probably should have warned you all before, but this is NOT BETA'd. I had a lovely volunteer, but she got one look at the description, and politely decline. (Is it really that messed up?) Man, Hermione get's beat up a lot, doesn't she? (As you can see, I was plainly influenced by a certain chapter in DH.) Love the Dark!Moments of it.

* * *

Part Seven  
**Collapse of Decadence **

She disappeared for two weeks after that. As usual, he didn't know where she went or what she was doing. But there was a change in the air when she left this time. It was almost as if he could feel the mounting pressure in the rest of the world. They were close, he was sure. The end was drawing nearer, and every minute that she didn't return, his fear twisted deeper and deeper.

He wanted to set off after her. But he knew she was too clever to be tracked. If she wasn't, she wouldn't have been the liaison. So he combed through her unused bedroom, pressing the fabric of her old robes to his face and pretending that he only wanted her to come back because he was worried about himself.

It was simpler to be selfish, or to think he was still selfish. It was much harder to admit that he wanted, needed her to come back to ease the discomfort her absence created. It was the distance and danger she was in. He remembered the last time she disappeared, taken hostage by his aunt. He never asked how she got away, it never seemed important before. He wished he knew now, now that she was gone and he was left alone in the empty castle and draft corridors lined with torn tapestries and unused rooms.

He was irrational. He was a caged animal, not allowed outside for more than a year, and trapped in a castle with the lingering memory of something he hated and wanted and feared. But still, he feared the outside more, where Potter didn't reign supreme. So he behaved like a good minion, and followed his new master's commands.

Potter sent him a letter with instructions to 'stay put' and 'wait for Hermione'. Draco did so only because it was what he was going to do anyway, not because Potter told him to. And each day that he didn't rebel, didn't live, didn't go after her, he died just a little bit more. For each day he had watched her wither away in front of him, become a shell, empty on the inside and sickly sallow outside, he became what she became.

By the time she did get back, he was half insane. He'd snapped the elm wand she made for him in two trying to _accio_ her back. He didn't tell her this when she asked about the wand. He just shrugged and said it was broken. But the relief that thundered over him when he heard the crack of her apparation was resound enough to leave him breathless.

She was even more beaten than when she left. Her skin was pale and greenish; her hair was singed and torn. Her hands were cut and bruised; there was a gash that stretched along her leg, up her stomach and across her arm. Her robes were tattered and shredded. It looked like the same curse that tore the Weasley boy apart in front of him. She didn't say what happened, or how she'd been injured and Draco didn't ask. He just shook with indignant anger at the sight of her blood spilling from open wounds.

He stood there, for what seemed like hours, watching her in the firelight. She was too busy giving herself first aid to pay him much attention. But eventually, she noticed him, over her shoulder, as she rubbed a salve on her wounds and transfigured books into rolls of enchanted bandages.

"Could you give me a hand?" she asked, one bandage in between her teeth, making it hard to understand her, and another in her wounded hands, trying to make a knot around the binding she'd set to her arm.

He nodded and walked over to her. He could smell burnt hair and mud.

"Tie this knot here," she pointed to her arm "tightly."

Draco did so, reluctantly and tried to keep her blood off his hands.

"Now, I need to bandage my stomach," she informed him as she pulled her robes and shirt up over her head. As she did this, the blood on her stomach dragged along her skin, leaving a thick crimson streak. Her hair frizzed as she pulled the robes away, completely unabashed that she was now sitting in nothing but her bra. "Hold it here." She pinned the end of one of the bandages down with her finger, just to the side of the long, deep cut.

"Like this?" he asked, and tentatively held it down.

"Yes." She answered without looking at him.

And it went like this, her giving instructions, and Draco obeying quietly, all the while trying his best not to touch her. And finally when she was wrapped up, and cast a healing spell on herself, she rolled over on the couch and shut her eyes. He wanted to tell her to get up, that it was his couch. But instead, he sat in a chair, with his back to the fire, and watched her sleep. He listened to the sound of her slow, even breathing and watched the tears drip from her shuteyes. He draped his cloak over her gently when the fire began to die. She didn't wake, but stirred just enough to bury her face in the collar.

After that, he sat on the floor next to her, his fingers itching to touch her bare shoulder. As always, the firelight made her brown hair glow, and even her sunken cheeks looked rosy.

It was a mistake. One he would always regret. It was an accident, he never meant to.

He never meant to care about her, or want her, or love her. But as he watched her sleeping, and the fear ebbing away in the wake of her long absence from him, he knew it was true. The mudblood and the pureblood.

_Opposites_.

He touched her hair, lightly. Even with all the frizz and curls, it was soft.

Draco wondered what happened to her cat. He remembered she used to have one. A big, fat tabby. As he recalled the faint outline of it resting in her lap on the Hogwarts Express, his fingers dipped farther into her wavy hair. He twisted his fingers in and pressed them against her scalp.

She made a soft noise in her sleep, something like a sigh.

And he found himself unable to pull away. Recklessly, he leaned in, her head tilted back against the cup of his hand on her neck.

She tasted like Earl Grey tea. Bitter and dark.

She opened her eyes and he braced for inevitable screaming that would accompany his lips on hers. But it never came.

She just stared up at him, like she was trying to figure out if he was real or not.

"You smell like the ocean." She said after a long moment passed.

"And you smell like a graveyard." He told her without removing his hand from her skin.

"Tomorrow," She said as she looked past him, to something he couldn't see, "it all ends tomorrow."

"What?"

She smiled up at him, that same, sad smile she used when she'd given him the wand she made. "Harry's found the last horcrux. Once he destroys it, it'll be up to us to kill Voldemort."

A shiver so intense ran over his spine, it made his toes arch.

"What do you mean, 'up to us'?" he still couldn't pull his eyes away from her fire-soft features.

"_Harry_ is the last horcrux. He's going to let Voldemort kill him."

"What the fuck is a horcrux?" Draco was nearly shaking with terror. He never, ever wanted to see that snake-face with slits for nostrils and red eyes with vertical pupils again, let alone face off against him.

"It doesn't matter. Once Harry's been killed, we'll all be protected. All we have to do is kill him." She sounded shallow and dry, like a receding lake under a burning desert sky. She was drying up.

"Let someone else do it."

She gave a real attempt at a smile that time, and reached up to twist her fingers in his shirt. And before he could think to argue, he was bending to meet her lips again.

"Just this once." She was saying, softly into his neck. "Just for tonight."

* * *

Finally! Jeez! I know this is a little unusual for my style, all the dialogue and no explicit sex. But I figured in a fic with as many 'pushing the envelope' themes as I had, I shouldn't turn it into smut. So - that's all you get. (Okay, maybe I'll give a few slight references back to the event in later chapters.)  



	9. Part Eight: Matter of Time

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** So, we're finally there. The last stand. Which side will come out on top? Any why is Draco going into the Castle alone? What will he find?

* * *

Part Eight  
**Matter of Time**

She was gone the next morning before he woke. There was a letter pinned to the mantle of the fireplace.

_ Hogwarts, midnight. Bring your wand. Tonight, it ends.  
-HJG_

And there was no more.

Draco spent the day hyperventilating by the fire and remembering the feel of her skin against his. At eleven, he left the _Fidelus charm_ of her Scottish Castle and apparated to Hogsmeade. The air was crisp with something that felt very much like the crackling of magic's in the air. He drew in a long breath, filled his lungs with the power of the anticipation and fear and entered the Hogwarts ground steadily.

There was already a crowd. They stood, mulling around, mostly looking scared or battle-ready. There were a few older witches and wizards, from the original Order. But Dumbledore's Army became the new Order, and students just barely of age, not even qualified to take their NEWTS was all that stood between this world and the next.

No one stood with their backs to the forbidden forest, and Draco could only surmise that the thin line of trees was all that separated the kids from the deatheaters. Although, there weren't nearly as many people as he an envisioned for the 'last stand' and a part of him reveled in their inevitable defeat.

He didn't have to wonder why there were so few. He had heard stories, during his year and a half long self-imposed exile. He heard of 'Muggle Born Registration Act'. He heard of the camps, the new wings of Azkaban devoted to those who 'stole' their magic. But it wasn't until he was finally back at Hogwarts, a place from his childhood, that he really took the time to appreciate how bad things were.

He could feel the despair and anguish in the air. He assumed that it was common knowledge what Harry Potter was about to do (for their side, at least). And everywhere he looked, people mourned the not-dead-yet man who would become even more of a legend tonight.

Martyrdom was the path Potter chose, and it killed Draco to admit that he was sorry. He was sorry things had to end like this, sorry for his part in all of it. Sorry that he spent one night, just one night with her. Because he knew it would never happen again. And he would spend the rest of his life trying to forget the way she looked laying naked in the light of the fire, hair spread out on the carpet, eyes making that sparking brown that he dreamed of at night, and telling him that it was alright.

_Everything'll be alright_. He could still her whispering it.

He spotted her from across the Hogwarts grounds. She was pressed so tightly against The Boy Who Lived, it was a wonder she could even breathe. He could hear her sobbing from 50 yards away.

He made his way past them, and their inner circle. He went unnoticed and slipped into the empty school. His footsteps echoed off the high, vaulted ceilings, and down the stretching, winding hallways. The staircases didn't move anymore, and the portraits were all empty. He imagined they were all jammed into smaller ones that overlooked windows of the forbidden forest.

He didn't know where he was going, really. He just let his feet take him up flights of stairs, past classrooms he used to sit in, and through secret corridors he used to prowl. Until, finally, he found himself on the seventh floor, face to face with the eerily blank wall, behind which, he knew was the Room of Requirements.

_I need help_.

And immediately, a door was formed out of the stone, and it opened to him. Without hesitating, he entered. It was always the one thing Snape and Dumbledore said to him during his sixth year. After his father was sent to jail, and he was branded with the dark mark, Dumbledore told him over and over again, that all he had to do was ask for help.

But back then, he'd had too much pride, too much hate to let anyone help him. He thought it was a sign of weakness, that he was a failure.

Inside the room there was nothing but blank walls and large windows that overlooked the grounds. He could see lights in the forest, beyond the tree line, and the groups of people near the smoldering remains of Hargid's house. It wasn't until his second inspection of the room that he noticed what waited for him there.

There stood a tall mirror, with an ornate gold frame and two clawed feet. There was an inscription on it in a language he'd never seen before. As he approached it, it didn't reflect his pallid features, as he would have expected it to. But instead, was the shadowy figure of his former Headmaster.

"Draco." The ghostly figure smiled and clapped his hands together. He looked younger than Draco remembered him being. But the again, the last memory he had of him was of Dumbledore defenseless and weak, begging. Draco pushed that thought aside.

"Professor." He greeted, not questioning how such things were possible. He learned long ago, not to question things that happened in the wizarding world.

"You are looking well." Dumbledore, or the reflection of his departed soul, perhaps, looked him over once and smiled. "Tell me, is it about to start?" His blue eyes twinkled just the way they did in Draco's mind, when he allowed his thoughts to wander that far.

Draco turned his head to the large window and nodded. "Nearly."

"Well, you'd better get going."

Draco didn't move. "Why are you here?" he asked, unable to stop himself.

"You wanted help." Dumbledore answered, rather blandly. "So, I am here to help."

"And how, exactly, are you going to help me? You're stuck in a mirror."

Dumbledore chuckled, his white beard moving as he laughed. "No, not stuck. This mirror can only show you your heart's greatest desire. Above all else, you desire help." He waved a finger at Draco and winked. "Young Master Malfoy, you came here tonight looking for help not for yourself, as I would have expected, but for them," Dumbledore pointed out of the windows surround the room. Where, Draco knew, down below people were beginning to fall into place.

"Potter's going to kill himself." Draco begrudgingly admitted.

"Oh, that is something Harry will have to deal with on his own. I have left him all the help I could." His eyes twinkled mischievously.

"So how are you going to help?"

"I can't. I'm not really here Draco. This is just what you want to see, what you truly desire."

"I desire an old geezer?"

"No, you desire power and wisdom. You wish you could be everything I was, so you could save her from having to fight anymore." And as Dumbledore finished, Draco didn't need to ask who, because Hermione's face had also appeared in the mirror, alongside himself. And the image of Dumbledore was gone.

The clock on the tower chimed a quarter till, and Draco turned from the haunting image of himself and her in the enchanted mirror. Hands clasped, a boy at his knee with grey eyes and brown hair.

* * *

Has Draco finally had a revelation? What will this mean for him and Hermione. And what about this epic battle? Who will live - who will die? You'll have to read the next chapter to find out.  



	10. Part Nine: Semblance of Trust

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** We get to see some old friends again! Warning: there's a rather long speech in chapter from Harry. Sorry, but it just didn't right to set everyone off to fight without a little inspiration, eh?

* * *

Part Nine  
**Semblance of Trust **

He stood at the door of the castle for a while, trying to make his hands stop shaking. And once he'd regained his composure, he walked across the grounds, past the deserted greenhouses towards the forest. He could see her easily, because he was searching or because she stood in the innermost ring, at Potter's right, he wasn't sure.

It was easy to blend into the crowd. He chose a spot off to the side, not too close, but not too far. He turned his back on her and gazed out at the eerily quiet forbidden forest.

"He's out there, somewhere."

A blond girl had appeared to his right, her half-lidded eyes and dreamy voice almost made him think she was a ghost. But one look at her radish earrings and butter-beer-cork necklace, and Draco knew it was Lovegood.

"Who?" he asked fingering his wand in his cloak pocket. He was distracted; his mind kept replaying the image of him and her standing hand in hand, smiling. His cloak still smelled like her.

"Voldemort" the reply came from his left. Unseen to him, Longbottom sidled up beside him, eyes set on a fixed point he couldn't see.

"I suppose so." Draco fished his wand out and checked the time on the Hogwarts tower clock. _Ten minutes to go_.

"You don't mind if I kill your Aunt, right?" Longbottom asked, conversationally.

"Be my guest." Draco shrugged and, remembering Hermione comment a few weeks earlier about his parents' house he added, "be sure to use _cruciatus_."

Longbottom nodded fiercely, like that question was supposed to be some kind of test. To his right, Lovegood did the same.

"Almost time." Draco wheeled around at the voice. Potter stood behind him, a lopsided grin on his face.

Draco checked the clock again, and avoided looking at Hermione.

"When he kills me, you'll only have a split second to hit him, so don't hesitate." Potter instructed him. Draco could only bring himself to nod.

"You know," Draco drawled "you don't have to do this." He wasn't sure why he said it, really. It wasn't because he particularly cared one way or the other. But, in the end, it only seemed appropriate that _someone_ said it.

"No, I really do." Behind him, Draco could see other men, braver than he, cringe at the words. "There's no other way." And for his part, Potter smiled. It was horribly depressing, resigned to death, tragic almost, but a smile all the same. He stepped forward and held out his hand. Draco stared at it for a few minutes before grasping it with his own. "Thank you, Draco. For everything you've done for us."

"Sure thing, Potter." Draco looked away and shook his hand.

But Potter didn't let go, instead he leaned in a little closer and lowered his voice. "Do me a favor, take care of her, when I'm gone." Potter nodded over his shoulder where Draco could make out the mass of brown frizzy hair.

He wanted to laugh it off, or remove his hand and punch Potter in the face. But he didn't. Instead, without even having to listen to the burning sensation of not behaving, he just nodded and said, "With my life."

He withdrew his hand and smirked. Potter nodded and backed away a bit. A girl with flaming orange hair appeared out of the crowd and stood at Potter's side.

As the minutes ticked by, the people around them began to form a kind of line. Potter at the center, hands in their robes, holding wands not yet visible. And a creeping silence found its way over the crowd.

Potter stepped up, his scar clearly visible in the moonlight to address his army.

"We've been planning this for a long time. Preparing, researching, training. But tonight, we fight. We're ready. Because tonight, we fight for Albus Dumbledore," here a strong round of grunting and weak clapping punctuated the legacy of the man, "for Cedric Diggory and Ronald Weasley." He paused for a moment, and Draco could hear Hermione's sharp intake of breath. Then Potter scanned the faces in the crowd. "We fight for Xenophilius Lovegood, and Frank and Alice Longbottom." He scanned more faces around them. "For Nymphadora Tonks Lupin, Severus Snape." There was a brief moment of silence as they all remembered what it cost them to get this far. "And everyone else they took from us. Tonight, I fight for my parents, and yours," Potter looked at Longbottom and nodded. "Professor Dumbledore was right about something. We have something they don't. We have a secret weapon Voldemort can't understand, which means that he underestimates us, even now." Potter seemed to straighten out to stand at his full height and looked across the vast-stretching line of his supporters. Some were crying, others weren't. But no one looked away from him, "We have love. We love friends, and family," he held out his hand and the red-headed witch took it and stood by him. "We have something to fight for. We aren't just fighting to kill them; we're fighting to protect everything we love. Remember that, and we'll show them magic they've never seen before."

There was a rushing of cheers and people embracing.

Draco sought her in the crowd. He found her in a sea of orange hair. She wasn't crying. Her face was set and her eyes were resolved. He pushed through the people, his hands trembling and his heart twitching, aching slightly.

"Hermione –"

"I release you."

"What?" There was something in his chest that heaved at her words. But the way her eyes glistened made it impossible to focus on anything but her face.

_Not now, not now._

"I want you do behave like Draco Malfoy." immediately, he felt a rush of power flood through his veins, like an imperius curse had been lifted. He pushed her back hard enough to make her stumble. His declaration lost, swallowed up by the possibility that perhaps she wanted him to love her, and the vow bound him to her will.

He shook with fury. Disgusted, he staggered back, mouth open, and his hands itching for his wand. He'd never felt as dangerous as he did then, never closer to losing control, to slapping her, cursing her, destroying everything she was.

He remembered what it felt like to hate her and her dirty, mudblood. He remembered that she was inferior, and he was powerful. He was reminded that she was nothing, _nothing_ compared to him. She wasn't worth the DNA she was made of. Just a silly monkey, too clever for her own good, and yet, he was caught in her web.

She was devious that way.

Dark magic swirled in him, humming, drumming against his opened chest. He'd never come that close to love and the mockery she made of him and it was enough to leave scars deep enough to last a lifetime.

He was dying to kill someone.

"Malfoy" he didn't stop, he couldn't, not now. _Not now._ He needed to kill something, someone. He needed forbidden, dark magic and blood on his hands. He need maniacal laughter and evil, evil propaganda. Because now that he was himself, he wasn't, because his head was still full of things like the feel of her skin and the way she smelled.

He pushed on, through the crowd, to the front of the line. He was panting and gripping his wand so hard, the grooves and imperfections of it were being fused into the supple skin of his hands. Those same hands that touched her, that felt her skin, that longed, that dreamed, that wished that bloody mirror had been real so her hand could fit perfectly in his.

_Tonight, it ends_.

* * *

What does this mean for Draco now? Does this mean everything he's felt has been only because she wanted him to? How will he fight now? Will he go back to feeling about Hermione the way he did before? Is there any hope at all for them? Next time: The battle begins!  



	11. Part Ten: Evils of Absolutionism

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** Last chapter before the epilogue. This is going to be kind of long. So warnings: more character deaths, violence, blood, strong language. All that good stuff! Also, writing action/adventure is really hard! I swear this was like 10 times long when I was writing it. I thought it was EPIC!

* * *

Part Ten  
**Evils of Absolutionism**

At the first flicker of green that shot from the forest, Draco already had his wand drawn and '_Avada Kedavra'_ out before the rest of them had time to think. He charged, headstrong and blindly into the darkness. The only light came from spells that shot from all directions, making the black sky streak red and green, like an unholy Christmas.

_"Protego."_ An insipid voice shouted to his right, and he didn't turn to see Potter's face gloat after saving Draco from a curse sent sideways through the trees.

_"Crucio!"_ Somewhere threw the trees; a deatheater felt the wrath of Draco's anger. He held it until he couldn't hear the screaming anymore. He had meant it for Hermione, and Potter, and the Weasley. He meant for them to feel his pain and he imagined her writhing face as he conjured the curse.

He smiled wickedly.

"Don't bother with them!" Potter shouted at his inner circle, which'd formed a kind of half ring around him. Draco was at the far end, though still close enough to see the blood on Hermione's cheek. It wasn't hers. "Just get deeper in, find Voldemoooooaaaahhhhh!"

His command was swallowed up by his own screaming. Potter dropped to his knees, clutching his forehead with both hands, his wand slumping between his fingers.

"Harry!" Hermione pushed past the others, _"Expecto Patronum!"_ A silver otter burst from the tip of her wand and scuttled forward through the trees, immediately dispelling the mounting chill that Draco had hardly been aware of.

_"Expelliarmus!"_ Longbottom disarmed a packrat deatheater lumbering through the trees at them.

_"Lumos."_ Hermione lit her wand and bet to Potter's side.

Draco turned away.

_"Morsmordre."_ Came from between the trees, and a large green skull and snake appeared in the sky, twisting and churning the air; acidic, metallic, bloodied.

"Fuck, Granger! Just get him up and moving!" Draco shouted and spared only a second to look at her over his shoulder before he pushed on through the trees.

_"Petrificus Totalus."_ Could be heard in the distance, and one of the older girls that used to play for Gryffindor's quidditch team fell.

_"Oppugno!"_ The girl Weasley shot a curse back. And in the distance, he could see a section of trees had come to life and were now attacking two cloaked figures.

_"Nox."_ Hermione extinguished her wand light as the deatheaters shouts grew louder, more frantic.

Draco fought desperately to shut out the pain in his arm that was threatening to drag him under. It was burning like it never had before, even in the room of perpetual darkness when he'd learned to stop the pain. Now, it was different, magnified. It was hard to breathe, like there wasn't enough oxygen. He gasped and clawed at his throat.

_"Rennervate."_ Hermione pointed her wand at Potter and his eyes flickered open.

_"Petrificus Totalus."_ Two voices echoed the same spell. The older Weasley twins moved forward and took Harry under the arms. They walked over the frozen body of Avery.

"About bloody time!" The Weasley girl screeched at them and threw a powerful curse into the darkness. _"Reducto!"_

In the distance, he could hear someone dying. It seemed the youngest Weasley was the most powerful.

"That way!" Draco chocked out, trying to block out the pain. Obviously, someone had to take the lead while Potter's eyes rolled in his sockets and he mumbled something about the 'the true master' and thrashed around in the other men's grasps. Ginny, who he had pointedly been speaking to, had her wand turned before he'd gotten the words out.

_"Incarcerous"_ and the three people who had appeared through the trees were immediately bound with rope so tightly they cried out. Draco recognized one of them as Nott.

_"Avada Kedavra"_ Draco pointed his wand and relished in the feel of taking the life. No one seemed to notice, or if they did, no one said anything about it.

_"Stupefy."_ Another boy their age came bursting through the underbrush wailing out the stunning charm.

"Oi! This is a war! Duel to kill!" Draco warned. But before he had a chance to do much else, a green streak came flying through the trees and struck the boy in the middle of his chest. His body fell immediately; his eyes still swiveled in their sockets, forever staring at Draco.

Draco cursed and threw a protective charm around them for a moment as more curses flew from the same direction.

"Dean!" Lovegood screamed and lunged for the body.

"Leave him! Leave him, Luna!" Potter instructed. Almost as if on cue, he seemed to be coming out of it. "He's farther in, near where Aragog's lair was." No one present got the reference, and as Potter wrenched free from the twins hands, he drew his wand up. "Come on."

The spells were getting strong, harder to deflect with anti charms and hex deflecting techniques. Draco was caught on the side, his robes ripped open as a curse flew past him. It burned like fire against his skin, but he kept going.

And all around him, he could see the others beginning to bleed and pant. He could only imagine how the rest of their army was fairing. It was their job to distract and take out as many as they could. They had to deal with the giants, Draco noted there must have been a few for the way the ground shook somewhere to the south, and everything else.

It was only a chosen few, 12 or so, that pushed into the heart of the forest. It was their job to let Potter get to the Dark Lord.

_"Relashio."_ Ginny took out another one.

_"Incendio."_ Finnegan cast a fire spell at a shadow amongst the trees, just to Draco's left.

"Watch it with that!" He shouted as he dusted the ash from his torn, bloody cloak. But it didn't matter. A second later, the other boy was down. Fixed, blank eyes looked at nothing but a dark sky.

Draco growled and pointed in the direction the curse had come from. _"__Sectumsempra!"_ Potter gave him a withering look, something like shame as they heard the screams of agony in the distance.

_"Serpensortia."_ Came from somewhere near Ginny and she was overrun with snakes.

"NO!" Potter bellowed, and without even uttering an incantation, he whipped his wand around and the snakes turned to dust before they could touch their fangs to her skin. Draco only saw his face for a second before he pulled Ginny to him. But that look would last him for a lifetime.

He'd never seen anyone look so dangerous before. And it was only then that Draco truly understood what Potter had been blathering on about before the start of the fight. When you had something or someone you wanted to protect with _that_ kind of ferocious dedication, there was no telling what you could do.

Draco spared a passing glance at where he'd last seen Hermione. Her jaw was set in a straight line as she pointed and flicked her wand, without ever having to use words.

Someone else went down behind him. Draco didn't turn to see who it was. "There're too many fucking trees!"

_"Evanesco."_ Hermione's voice cut threw the din of the battle as she appeared at his side. She pointed her wand from tree to tree in no order. They started vanishing, making a winding path of open earth, and moonlit sky.

"This way." Potter bellowed and charged ahead, still holding onto Ginny.

_Almost time_. Draco counted the seconds. He could feel the pull of the dark mark. He didn't bother telling Potter; obviously he had his own way of knowing.

And then, the forest parted. There was a huge clearing, hollowed out and dug down like a kind of burrow. And there, in the middle of all the chaos and death, surrounded by three cloaked figures, was the Dark Lord himself.

Draco panicked. _"Crucio." _The deatheater nearest him hit the ground, writhing and spurting unintelligible curses. Rookwood's hood fell as he screamed.

The Dark Lord waved his wand, and Draco fell to the earth, his knees digging into the dirt, unable to breathe.

"Very good, Draco. I see you have improved. But then again, you always did have a knack for the dark arts." Those slit nostrils flared, and the red eyes with vertical pupils pinned him, bound him. There was a terrible screaming and it was a moment before Draco realized he was the one making it.

"NOW!" Potter ordered, and out of the corners of Draco's blurring vision he could see the last of their battalion run forward.

Hermione flanked by the twins, following just on the heels of Potter, Ginny beside him, keeping perfect pace. Longbottom and Lovegood on the other side, running full speed and just behind them was an older boy, Lee Jordan.

Draco remembered him from his quidditch days. It was utter ridiculous that at that moment he should be thinking about flying on a broomstick. But he always did love the feel of the wind on his face, knees tucked in, the smooth wooden handle of the broom sliding under his half-gloved hands as he rolled and arced in the air.

The air was beginning to turn cold all around him. And Draco held onto the feeling of the wind on his face.

He could see the dark capes hovering just above the ground as the chill set to his bones. The dementors were coming for him. But he didn't close his eyes, or give in to the misery that seemed to overrun anything else in his mind. Instead, he watched _her_. She was dueling Mulciber, along with Lee and Ginny. Longbottom and Lovegood were dueling Bellatrix, the Weasley twins were going after the snake and Potter was standing right in front of the Dark Lord.

But the only thing Draco focused on was her. The way her hair moved, the way her lips formed the curses and her hand flicked her wand. The way she inched forward, bold and brave and foolish as ever, and it didn't matter then that what he'd felt for her wasn't real. It didn't matter because it was the closest he'd come to love, to understanding Dumbledore and Potter. It was the freest he'd ever been.

So what difference did it make if it wasn't real? What did it matter that the mirror showed him standing with her? Mirrors and vows were nothing compared to her. She was real, and she accepted him. She wanted him, she let him be himself, at last, even though she probably wanted someone to love her at the very end.

The dementor was right above him now, bending over, taking long rattling breaths.

Draco gripped his wand and kept the thought in his head of what she'd looked like in the firelight.

_"Expecto Patronum."_ A weak silvery mist exuded from his wand, but it had no shape or form. But the dementor paused for a second at it. And that was all Draco needed. He thought of her lips, her hands, her scars. He thought of her books, her eyes, her hair, her smell. He thought of the mirror, and what it had been like to see love reflected in his own eyes.

_"Expecto Patronum!" _This time, a sleek four-legged animal burst from his wand and moved like the wind after the fleeing dementors. He held on to it, concentrated on Hermione as his artic fox chased the shadowy creatures away.

The cold dissipated in their absence, and Draco was on his feet in no time. He could see Hermione break away from her duel, leaving it up to Ginny and Lee. She was headed in the same direction as he was, towards Potter.

"All your friends will die tonight." Voldemort hissed as he circled Harry, their wands drawn. "I am the master of the elder wand now."

"Maybe, but I know something you don't." Harry smiled and raised his wand. "I am the true master of the deathstick."

There was a _shink_ of metal as Draco turned to see one of the Weasley twins wielding a silver sword, and Nagini's head spinning through the air.

"No!" The Dark Lord howled.

Draco was moving as fast as he could, but he was still too far back to reach them in time.

One of the twins collapsed as they were hit with the killing curse fired from Bellatrix. She screamed out in pain as Neville had taken the chance to hit her with a crucio so powerful, blood seeped from her eyes, mouth and nose.

But Draco only spared them a passing glance as he ran for Potter. Hermione was almost there now, she was ahead of him. But he already has his wand out, ready for his chance.

_"Avada Kedavra"_ The green curse left the wand at the same instant Draco herd Hermione's voice cut through the clearing.

_"Expelliarmus!"_ Hermione shot the spell and the wand in Voldemort's hand flew up into the darkness.

Potter's body fell. The wand flew. And a yellow stream of light came from behind them. Hermione stumbled.

Draco was close enough to reach over, if he wanted to. He recognized the curse. It was the like the one that tore Ron apart from the inside. There was no external damage. It was Dolohov's specialty. Her head turned as she fell and Draco could see it in her eyes: all cleverness and books.

Before blood shot from invisible cut under her skin, he could still see the fading bruises along her collarbone that he'd kissed the night before. Without thinking, without words or knowledge of his actions, Draco's hand drew back to where the curse had come from.

Dolohov was torn apart. His arms and legs were ripped from his body as he screamed. Blood shot in all directions and Draco held the curse flowing threw him for only long enough to watch the other man die.

Then he turned back to the Dark Lord. He could faintly make out the sound of gurgling breaths on the ground next to him.

The snake-like man was smiling, wand already in hand.

_"Fiendfyre."_ Draco cast the spell at the same time the green jet of magic shot towards him.

_"Protego."_

A shield was cast between the Dark Lord and those still left fighting. Potter was standing, his wand held aloft as the fire became demonic shapes as it devoured the Dark Lord. There was a low howl pain from Mulciber and a screech like a dying animal that Draco could only hope was Voldemort.

_"Feindfyre Potestas."_ Draco commanded the fire to yield to him and extinguished the flames.

Panting, he fell to his knees beside her. There was so much blood. It formed a puddle the length of her body as it absorbed into the ground. There were no visible damages, only puddles and puddles of blood that shouldn't have been there.

"Draco." She rasped out, trying to move her hand.

"Hermione!" Potter screamed her name, "Hold on, just hold on." He summoned his patronus and sent it galloping through the trees. "I called for help, they'll be here any minute."

"No use." She said and coughed up blood, staining her chin and shirt. "Draco, you have to do it."

"No." he shook his head, tears falling on her face. And he didn't care, he didn't _fucking_ care that he was crying.

"You have to." Her leg twitched and it was clear that whatever charm she'd used on herself for protection wasn't strong enough to save her. It just bought her some time.

"Do what?" Potter asked, trying to lean in. But Draco just drew her closer, folding himself around her.

"Kill me."

"What?" Neville shouted from somewhere behind him.

"The last condition…" she chocked again and Draco nearly fell apart.

"The vow. The last condition of the vow. I swore I wouldn't let her die unless I killed her myself." Draco told them, deadpan.

"What's wrong with you?" Potter demanded, but Draco ignored him.

"I order you, Draco Malfoy, to behave selfishly." Her eyes were beginning to fade.

There was the same, burning feeling in his chest that he used to feel so often when he was at the Order's hideout. It was the snake that coiled around his heart and bound him to her will. But this was worse than all the other pains, because it was the hardest thing he'd ever been ordered to obey.

"No, no I can't. I won't. Don't make me." He begged her, _begged_ her.

"Hermione, don't." Potter leaned closer still and Draco resisted the urge to lash out. His chest burned, but it was nothing next to what she was asking him. He wanted to retaliate, kill her for being so stupid, so weak.

"Ask me." She whispered to Draco, her grip becoming weaker. He must have made a confused face, because she tried to laugh. It was the single most horrifying sound he'd ever heard: Hermione Granger's death rattle. "How I s-survived."

"How?" He asked her, his voice sounded much too composed, even to himself.

"I can teach you to bottle glory…" she crinkled up her face and used a slightly cocknied accent.

"And even put a stopper death." Draco finished for her. "Snape showed you." She nodded against his hand. He remembered Snape's speech as well, from first year potions. Back then, he'd wanted glory. He'd wanted recognition, fame, a legacy. He was jealous of Potter's celebrity, for his role in his own family's fall from grace. The reputation of the 'Malfoy' name was gone now, obliterated by the ashen skeleton only a few feet away from him. These were foolish things that all meant nothing now.

"Please, Draco." Her fingers, twisted in his shirt, loosened as a blank expression swept across her face, through her eyes. "It hurts."

His chest flared. The burning was worse than his mark ever was. It left him gasping for air and doubled over, his head resting against her bloodied cloak. And then, it stopped. There was no more pain. His heart made the decision for him.

He could see the anguish written on every feature of her face. The harder the vow, the more pain it caused when she asked it. Her asking this of him hurt her. And him holding out, waiting for death along side her was hurting him even more.

He hated himself, hated that he'd done this to himself. And he hated her as well, because she did this to him, to them. All the pain, the confusion, the mixed up emotions Draco was never prepared for in the first place – she put them all on him. She gave him this, the pseudo-love that haunted him, berated him, taunted him. She was the cause of it all.

"They're coming!" Potter yelled and turned away from them towards the snapping branches and rustling underbrush.

Draco raised his head and drew his wand. He looked her in the eyes, those eyes that used to be so vibrant, and she smiled. Blood-stained and hiding the pain, the fear, the utter injustice of it all.

"I'm sorry." She whispered and shut her eyes.

"So am I."

He didn't say the curse; doing so would have made it too real. Instead, he touched the tip of his wand to her chest directly. There was a tiny flash of green light, her whole body flexed slightly and then fell limp. Still, deathly quiet. And she was gone. It was over.

* * *

First, I wanted to thank everyone on the LJ Dramione community who helped me with Draco's Patronus. Especially **krissa27**, **eggie1978**, **snowe**, and **nistha**. I am also aware that canonically, Seamus' patronus was a fox, but I diverted a bit from canon (as you can tell) and to me, I think a fox fit Draco much better than Seamus. 

All the spells in this chapter are real, except _Feindfyre Potestas _which I used to put out the feindfyre (the demon flames from DH). 'Potestas' means to control, subdue or dominate in latin.

The 12 people with Harry were: Draco, Hermione, Ginny, Fred, George, Lee Jordan, Luna Lovegood, Nevile, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnegan, and Ernie McMillian (he was the body that fell just before they reached the clearing).

If you're intested in how the Elder Wand changed hands, it went something like this. Dumbledore took it from Grindelwald. Draco '_Expelliarmus_'ed it from Dumbledore (who was buried with it). Harry '_Expelliarmus_'ed Draco when Hermione took him to the Order. (So Harry is the rightful master of it when he faces Voldemort in the forest). Voldemort 'killed' Harry in the woods. Hermione '_Expelliarmus_'ed it out of Voldemort's hand. Dolohov took down Hermione. And then Draco killed Dolohov, so Draco is technically the true master of the Elder Wand. (Just a little example of how much time went into making this fic.)_  
_


	12. Epilogue: Consequences of Desire

**Title: **The Misfortunes of Virtue  
**Author:** Winter Ashby _(rosweldrmr)_  
**Disclaimer:** Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling & Misfortunes of Virtue (title only) were written by the Marquis de Sade in 1787 (more notes about the literary allusions in the footnote of the last chapter)**  
Rating:** M (for language and adult themes)**  
Summary: **Draco steals away in the dead of night on orders from the Dark Lord to either kidnap or kill Hermione. But who is he really loyal to?**  
Timeline**: Post '_The Half-Blood Prince_' Some incorporated plot of '_Deathly Hallows_'  
**Warning**: Major Character Deaths! Inferi!Character, Necromancism: controlling the dead (NOT necrophilia), strong language, violence, blood, gore, & DH spoilers  
**Authors Note:** This is the end, folks. Thank you so much for getting this far! But, as you've probably guessed, this chapter contains the inferius, so be warned. There are foot notes about the origin of the title and 'thanks you's.

* * *

Epilogue  
**Consequences of Desire**

The world faded out of existence.

Somewhere, he might have been aware that Fred, and Lee were dead. He might have registered that Harry was alive, surprised, but alive. And it might have even registered that Ginny, Harry and Neville were trying to pry the body from his grip. It might have registered that the reinforcements showed up just a minute too late. And it might have registered that three of them knew what he'd done.

But that wouldn't be till months, maybe years later.

The only thing that Draco knew in that moment, as the smoke cleared and the moon shone out from behind the overcast clouds, was that he was a killer.

She made him a killer, when so many others had tried and failed, bodies lay at his hands, he'd never once felt guilt. He'd never once felt remorse for taking a life. Not before Hermione. But now, he was sure he was marked. There would be a skull and snake swimming just above his head for the rest of his life. And everyone would be able to see the face of the woman he took from the world.

He pulled her to him, inhaling the smell of her, memorizing the feel of her skin, scared and cut. He forced himself to love the blood on his hands because it was a part of her. He blinked back the tears that burnt and stung his eyes and nose.

"Draco." Harry touched his shoulder, but Draco didn't move, didn't speak, did nothing but cry over her corpse, still clutched in his hands. He pulled her still-warm body to his, her chest pressing against his own. And there was no breathing, no living left in her. He'd taken it, extinguished that brown spark that he used to dream of.

Eventually, he was aware that they'd all gone and he was alone. It was probably hours since the end of the war, since 'the good guys' won. Draco neither knew nor cared about what happened to the rest of them. He didn't notice that the bodies of his one-time-companions were being taken away, to be buried and blessed. He might have heard Harry say something about letting Draco 'say his goodbyes' as the footsteps faded back into the forest.

When he was alone with her, in the clearing, her blood drying to his skin and the cold setting in, he broke. Wailing, he held her closer and buried his face in her hair.

Frantic with guilt and grief so deep it cut at his ribs and heart until he was sure he'd bleed to death, just like her. He grappled with her hair, twisting his fingers deeper, trying to inhale every last bit of her he could manage.

Draco went insane.

He rose, holding her across his chest, and with one sparing look over his shoulder and concentrated on the three D's.

Destination.

Determination.

Deliberation.

With the crack of apparation, he was back at the Scottish Castle, Hermione's body weighed heavy in his arms as he made his way up the stone steps. Once he was inside, he set her down on the couch in front of the hearth were he used to sleep.

The tears dried to his face, and left a track of pale skin down his dirty cheeks.

He pointed his wand, recalling dark books he'd read before, and conjured all the magic he had left as his wand made a forceful jabbing motion and he mumbled, _"Inferius Resurgo."_

---

Draco could still hear it scratching at the door in the dungeons as he made his way up the stone steps. He spent most of his time these days selling off pieces of the castle's artifacts at a local pawn shop to he could buy supplies for his potions and food.

Other than that, he sat in the low armchair in front of an empty fireplace and listened to the creature he made claw at the wooden door.

He was broken.

He raided her unused bedroom and pilfered bits of her that were left behind. A piece of parchment with her handwriting, a stitch of cloth that smelled like her, her wand, a snippet of her hair he took from her reanimated corpse, and a single enchanted picture of her.

She was younger, only 5th year then. It was Christmas. Draco could see the tree and twinkling lights behind her, making her brown eyes shine. He folded it so that Harry and Ron were tucked under, against the palm of his hand, and all that was left was her smile and her face, burned into his memory.

With this, he would sit and ponder the essence of a soul, and replay in his mind what it was like to kill her. Locked in her_ Fidelus charm_, he was untouchable, untraceable, unable to live. So instead, he existed. Just breathed air and walked the halls, pretending that the creature was still her when he would put a sleeping charm on it and lie down next to its cold skin. He called it Justine, because it just didn't seem right to go on calling it 'Hermione' when it clearly wasn't. He would touch its hair, which was coarser than he remembered, and whispered that he loved her/it.

* * *

I firstly need to thank everyone that replied to my questions in the LJ communities canon(underscore)evidence, canon(underscore)details, dramione, sevans, ravenclaw and books(underscore)freckles. Thank you all so much for your help and input. But I wanted to give an extra special thank you to **ladyamber** who was the beautiful mind behind the inferius curse. 

_Inferius Resurgo_ literally translated means 'the dead resurrect'. Originally, I wanted Draco to use the resurrection stone to make Hermione into an inferius, but everyone seemed to think that wasn't the power of the stone. So, I went with the curse. This is not canon, but I think it's a pretty good idea of what the curse would be.

Now, onto some educational information about the title of the fic The Misfortunes of Virtue:

The title and the name Draco gave inferius!Hermione (Justine) are both literary references to a book called _The Misfortunes of Virtue._ It was from a French book (also called _Justine_) written in 1787 by the Marquis de Sade, a libertarian who was put in an insane asylum because he was a psychotic, sex-crazed aristocrat._ Justine_ was the first of his novels, one of many, that were increasingly erotic as he got older. And in 1801, Napoleon had him arrested because of the graphic nature of his works.

I thought these themes fit well with Draco's character in my fic.

So, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed my little slice of the Draco/Hermione action. Also, if anyone knows of any other fics with inferius!Anyone, let me know. I find the concept absolutely enthralling. I guess that's because I love zombies. ;)


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